Gordon Wright, authority on European
history, dead at 87

Professor Emeritus Gordon Justin Wright, a
specialist in 19th and 20th-century European
history, died on Tuesday, Jan. 11, at his
Stanford home of complications from diabetes. He
was 87.

Named the William H. Bonsall Professor in
History in 1969, Wright, whose career included
both academia and diplomacy, served as executive
head of the History Department from 1959 to 1965,
and as an associate dean of the School of
Humanities and Sciences from 1970 to 1973.

"He was the most distinguished historian
of France of his generation in this
country," Richard Lyman, president emeritus
of Stanford University, said. "And he was
not only a distinguished scholar, but a most
remarkable human being - thoughtful, fair-minded
and compassionate.

"He inspired devotion in others and there
was light in his eyes that I'm sure was there
until the very end."

A specialist on the history of World War II
and its impact on European institutions and
culture, Wright was the author or editor of 15
books, including Raymond Poincaré and the
French Presidency, The Reshaping of French
Democracy, the popular textbook France in
Modern Times, 1760-1960, Rural Revolution in
France: The Peasantry in the Twentieth Century,
The Ordeal of Total War, 1939-1945, Insiders
and Outliers: The Individual in History and
Between the Guillotine and Liberty: Two Centuries
of the Crime Problem in France.

Commenting on Rural Revolution in France,
a reviewer for the Political Science Quarterly
wrote that "it sheds light on many problems.
. . . It is written in readable English, witty,
clear and brief. In only two hundred pages of
text it makes a really valuable contribution to
our knowledge of contemporary France."

Wright was elected president of the American
Historical Association in 1975. Colleagues Gordon
Craig, Carl Degler and David Potter held the same
position ­ a significant coup for one
institution. Wright also served as president of
the Society for French Historical Studies.

"He was one of the most distinguished
historians ever to teach at Stanford and he was
also an important leader and department builder,
serving several years as chairman, "Paul
Robinson, the Richard W. Lyman Professor in the
Humanities and a long-time friend, said.
"Gordon was an extraordinarily good human
being, not without a certain ironic edge, and a
man who won not just the respect but also the
affection of his colleagues."

Born in Lynden, Wash., on April 24, 1912, to a
family that had roots in America dating back to
the 1630s, Wright counted farmers, teachers and
preachers among his forefathers. Noting that his
great-grandfather joined the California Gold Rush
but did not strike it rich, Wright once joked
that "my family has never had the knack of
making money."

"In high school I wanted to be either an
archaeologist, hunting for petrified dinosaur
eggs in the Gobi Desert, or a Davis Cup tennis
player," Wright once said. "In college
I first intended to become a chemical engineer,
then a biologist, then a diplomat. In graduate
school I set out to be a specialist on Germany,
but found myself eventually facing a choice
between Japan and France. So much for the
well-planned career choice!"

Wright came to Stanford for advanced study
after graduating from Whitman College in Walla
Walla, Wash. in 1933. He earned his master's
degree in 1935 and his doctorate in 1939, taught
at the University of Oregon for four years, and
then joined the U.S. State Department.

During and after World War II, Wright served
as a State Department specialist on France and as
a foreign service officer. His first
foreign-service assignment in late 1944 was to
lead a convoy of vehicles and personnel from
Lisbon to Paris, while the Allies and Germans
were still fighting, to bring reinforcements to
the reopened U.S. embassy.

"The State Department official who handed
me this assignment later told me that he hadn't
expected us to make it," Wright told an
interviewer in 1986.

Wright also served as a cultural attache to
the U.S. Embassy in Paris from 1967 to 1969, a
time marked by the student upheaval of May 1968.
He was decorated by the French government with
the Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des
Lettres, and chaired the Franco-American
Binational Commission for Educational Exchange,
the Fulbright fellowship program.

After his second tour in France, Wright
returned to the University of Oregon and taught
there for 18 years. Before coming to Stanford as
a full professor in 1957, he also taught at
Columbia University and the National War College.

"Gordon was a person who clearly could
move between the world of scholarship and the
world of diplomacy," David Kennedy, the
Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History, said.

"He was a marvelous scholar and a man of
unimpeachable probity and integrity ­ a model of
a university citizen. Gordon was the kind of
person whose word was not only penetratingly
truthful but utterly reliable. He was a man of
few words, but people took very seriously
everything he said."

Kennedy recalled a time when he felt he had
been done an injustice by the department chair,
and he went to Wright to plead his case.

"Gordon heard me out with great patience,
then looked me in the eye and said, 'I'm very
disappointed in you.'

"And I was properly chastened because he
was one of those people who could look you in the
eye without menace or condescension."

Kennedy said he also remembered with great
fondness the social events that Wright and his
wife, Louise, often hosted at their campus home.

Wright won Stanford's Lloyd W. Dinkelspiel
Award for outstanding service to undergraduate
education in 1975. He retired in 1977, but
continued to teach at Stanford, Arizona State
University, the College of William and Mary, the
University of Washington and Northwestern
University.

He was a member of the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical
Society, and a corresponding member of the
Academie des Sciences Morales Politiques. He was
awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1980-81.

Wright is survived by his widow, Louise; a
sister, Annette Day, of Salt Lake City; four
sons: Eric, a professor of law at the University
of Santa Clara; Michael, president of African
Wildlife in Washington, D.C.; Philip, a lawyer in
Sacramento; and David, a lawyer in San Francisco;
and six grandchildren.

The family will hold private services at the
gravesite, and will host a reception from 3 to 5
p.m. Saturday, Jan. 22, at their campus home.

Those wishing to make donations are asked to
send them to the Gordon Wright Memorial Fund for
Graduate Fellowship Support, c/o the History
Department, Stanford University, Stanford, CA,
94305, or to the Whitman College library
development fund at the Whitman College Office of
Development, 345 Boyer Ave., Walla Walla, WA,
99362.K